I expect you are all familiar with the maps showing the radical shrinking of Palestinian land over 70 years due to the expansion of colonial Israeli settlement. Startling and appalling, yes, but to me they bring back strong memories of other maps, in a precisely analogous situation, which goes to the heart of why Israel is an apartheid state.
The original apartheid state of South Africa created “homelands”, known colloquially as “bantustans”, and proposed that, as the apotheosis of apartheid, these “homelands” would become independent states and house the majority black population of the country in fenced-off areas which had been too arid, rocky or commercial mineral free to attract significant white settlement over three centuries of theft. South Africa actually did recognise some of these as Independent states, while the rest were supposed to be on a course to recognition.
The maps really do bring out the startling similarity between these two attempts to formalise the dispossession of the original people. Thankfully, even though the “Homelands solution” had its supporters including Thatcher, it never achieved support beyond what was then an extreme right wing view, and none of the “independent states” ever achieved international recognition.
I worked in the FCO as the South Africa (Political) desk officer from 1984-6, and seeing off right wing Tory lobbying to adopt the Homelands policy was a major problem. It is simply symptomatic of the extraordinary right wing shift in western politics over the intervening three decades, that a “Bantustan” solution for Palestine, laughably called a “two state solution”, is now the accepted wisdom of the political and media class.
The proposal is precisely analogous to South Africa not only because of the displacement of the original population into separated enclosures, but because it leaves the bulk of the land in the hands of a colonial population, whose identity and exclusivity is specifically enshrined in law by ethnicity. Israel’s adoption this year of a new nation state law putting the state on an officially racist basis only confirmed the reality encapsulated in a raft of hundreds of other laws and regulations. The harsh discriminatory regime faced by non-Jews in Israel has been exhaustively documented, and it is not my purpose to repeat it here. I recommend this lecture by Ben White:
Many of the practices Ben describes have strong echoes of the apartheid regime, as do the disregard for Black/Palestinian life, the regular use of disproportionate lethal force against protestors, the mass arrests and detentions, the impunity for both law enforcers and “master race” civilians who attack blacks/Palestinians. These features are highly analogous.
But what I want to address here is the striking similarity between the arguments used by supporters of apartheid, with which I dealt every day at the FCO, and the arguments used today by supporters of Israel. They came by post thirty years ago not internet, and we did not use the word meme, but the key arguments are exactly the same.
We are outnumbered, we will be murdered in our beds.
Supporters of apartheid argued constantly that, as there were more black than white people in South Africa, they would be powerless in a single, democratic South Africa and would be dispossessed and murdered. Bloodcurdling quotes from black nationalists, some real, some invented, would be recycled continually as evidence that a peaceful united South Africa was not possible. A unitary democratic state, it was frequently asserted, would inevitably be followed by a massacre of the white population.
I think it is extremely important to state that the white South Africans arguing this, and their overseas supporters, genuinely believed it at the time. In 1984-6, they really did think majority rule would mean massacre.
I hear precisely the same argument from Israelis and their supporters today. A single state encompassing Israel and Palestine is not possible because they would be outnumbered. Exactly as in South Africa then, these assertions are often accompanied by an obsession with racial demographics and birth rates. And exactly as in South Africa then, the Israelis today really have been taught actually to believe this – that they will all be massacred unless the original population is corralled and viciously controlled.
In fact, of course, no such thing occurred in South Africa. The capacity of a subject people for forgiveness once released is generally surprising. It turns out that it is vicious racial overlordship, as opposed to subjection, which sooner develops psychopathy in a nation. Indeed, remarkably the South African government is only now taking the first tentative steps towards long overdue land reform.
The Land Was Empty Before We Colonised It
White supremacists had put an enormous amount of effort into arguing that the part of Africa most free of disease and amenable to human population, was remarkably free of humans before the arrival of the colonists. The amount of historical distortion involved in this was mind-boggling, and it has been comprehensively debunked since.
It is however remarkable how exactly the same arguments are repeated by Israelis and their supporters who make a variety of ahistoric claims: that the Naqba never happened, that the Palestinians always lived herded together in the Gaza strip, that there is no such thing as a Palestinian identity, and that illegal West Bank settlements are built upon previously unoccupied land.
The Only Democracy in the Region
This claim was made repeatedly by both South Africans and Israelis. It depended on the notion that black South Africans were not South African citizens, but could exercise their democratic rights within the “Homelands”, precisely as Israel argues that the millions of displaced Palestinians are not Israeli citizens but can exercise their democratic rights within the Palestinian occupied territories they were herded to. And again, this argument was rejected with derision by the Western media and political class in the South African case, but to query it in the Israeli case is well outside the Overton window.
The Original Population Are Better Off
A rehash of the Imperial argument that governance by the master race brings economic benefits to the colonised, it was continually asserted that Black South Africans enjoyed better working conditions than any other Africans. Similarly Israel claims that by permitting its caged Palestinian labour force to commute into Israeli factories from their camps, it is helping the Palestinian people.
If you scroll down the replies to this tweet, made at the time of the Gaza demonstration massacre, you will find numerous examples of all of the above arguments being put forward by supporters of Israel. I really had not expected to find myself still fighting apartheid in 2018, let alone in a situation where it is viewed by the Establishment as the acceptable solution.
I do not accept the arguments of any proponent of a “two state solution”, any more than I accepted the arguments of the supporters of apartheid South Africa. It is an essential work to convince people that, despite the massive backing of the media and politicians for it, the “two state” solution represents nothing but the ultimate sanctification of apartheid Israel.
The disgraceful shift of Saudi Arabia to close alliance with Israel and the USA to pursue an obsessive fight against the interests of Shia Muslims everywhere, has hopefully lost some traction after it has become impossible to deny that Mohammed Bin Salman is the psychopath his actions, especially in Yemen but also against peaceful democratic dissidents, had long revealed him to be. The Salman/Kushner plan for an ultra-fragmented Palestinian “state” with its capital in an obscure outer suburb of Jerusalem may have been dealt a mortal blow in the diplomatic world.
The only potential resolution of the situation in Palestine must involve justice and dignity for all. That solution requires the abolition of apartheid Israel and its replacement by a unitary, democratic state blind to race and religion. That is no more impossible in Palestine than it was in South Africa. The fears of those who believe it is not possible, are just as implausible as the fears of apartheid supporters 30 years ago,
Well said.
Oh by the way, when you move in, take the land, the resources, and shit on the original inhabitants, you have little ground to stand on. That is unless you think that you are ethnically superior.
It’s a delusion that comes from nationalism and colonialism. The human mind creates layers with which to place its thinking, when we decide on a bed narrative the mind says “we won’t debate that anymore, just accept it as fact and use it as the base mechanism to develop the next layer of thinking.” It’s why you get supposedly learned people composing the most eloquent and developed intellectual arguments based on some pretty shoddy base narratives. The clergy are masters of it, some know they’re doing it, others not. It’s all about disguising a reality that we find distasteful or don’t want to accept ie. god isn’t real, or that we’re a bunch of intolerant murderous colonialist settlers who will think nothing of robbing land, water and freedom from the original inhabitants.
Well said Craig. It has been my own view for the last decade that a two state solution was never on the cards as far as Zionists and its supporters were (and are) concerned.
The Paestinians have always been portrayed as nasty terrorists trying to push Je.s out of the Je.ish homeland and the MSM has consistently pushed that canard into the minds of readers/viewers for 70 years.
As a South African born in 1949 a month before the winner of the 1948 Whites Only National election, National Party implemented its Apartheid policy watching, through a child’s eyes the consequences on my family and community, I wish to thank you for this and all the others that have made me a craigmurray follower. Your voice speaks for many of us unable to express ourselves so eloquently. Using the platform you so justly stand on to be the Voice for the voiceless. I do go on??
Whites only national election? I thought some blacks and coloreds could vote in the Cape.
Guess which country with with the Apartheid South Africa to get a nuclear bomb and helped sourced 6 Boeing 707s and adopt them to drop it? the jets were bought in Nigeria. Interesting that the Loyalists part of Belfast fly the Israeli flag and the Republican the Palestine one…
Catholics in both parts of Ireland are well aware of how they were (and, in the North, still are) victims of settler colonialism.
Much like the English know what the Normans brought with them and “The Harrying of the North” with its scorched earth policy has shaped England ever since with Norman Overlords in London wreaking havoc and destruction and imposing foreign rulers
Do those Norman overlords include Gordon Brown and the Scots in his UK cabinet?
Last time I looked (and I realise you are a Londoner and cannot see through the wood-burner smog) but Scotland is not part of England. You might be thinking of the Londoner Alistair Darling but I am not.
I am thinking of the North of England which was more Dane than Norman and where the destruction of The North of England was scorched earth.
‘Catholics in both parts of Ireland are well aware of how they were (and, in the North, still are) victims of settler colonialism.’
Still are? Got any examples you care to share?
Racism by an airline – Comair in British Airways livery.
Two black musicians on an internal SA flight with business class seats.moved to economy for a white woman. When they complained, they were told to leave.
British Airways’ franchisee in South Africa throws off two black passengers
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.economist.com/gulliver/2017/12/09/british-airways-franchisee-in-south-africa-throws-off-two-black-passengers#
Good enough post and yes, there are similarities with South Africa, but in terms of the scale of the problem I’d say Palestinians have more in common with 19th century American Indians.
There’s no solution to being wiped out, not a two state solution or a one state solution will do it.
I think it’s about time that we admitted that the Israel-Palestine issue isn’t a crossword puzzle. We are talking about systematic war crimes and ethnic cleansing. It goes way beyond apartheid in South Africa.
History throws up these things that are so heinous and of such a grand scale that nothing anyone ever does will fix them. That’s what’s going on in Palestine right now. The best we can hope for is to make it stop.
We think of the answer to this as being over there but it isn’t, it’s right here in our own back yards. Israel wouldn’t act like this for 5 seconds without support from western countries like the UK and US.
If there is a general Middle East war, Israel will seize the opportunity to solve their Palestinian problem, whether through expulsion or genocide. I think that’s a lot of the reason why they keep trying to get the U.S. to go to war with Iran.
From an Israeli perspective, the “problem” is more or less solved. They’d love to fully take over Gaza and the West Bank, of course, build a few hotels etc., but these are more or less clean-up operations. Something like 90% of the Palestinian population has been expelled.
The whole area is a massive crime scene. I can’t even fathom the idea of finding any solution there. It’d be like trying to find the solution to the Big Bang. I can’t see past making them stop and then setting up some sort of Nuremberg type system to deal with the criminals.
There’s nothing more depressing than this subject for me.
I posted this early Hatuey, it provides a detailed potential road map for final Decolonisation
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/10/12/choices-made-from-zionist-settler-colonialism-to-decolonization/
You might find it interesting
That’s a huge read. I stopped about half way. I actually disagreed quite a bit of it. The parts I agreed with were the unrealistic parts.
If I could give a Palestinian advice, it would be to get away from the scumbags. Let them have Palestine for now.
Israel is doomed to fail. Sooner or later they’re going to pick on the wrong guys and get hammered.
Deep down inside, everybody — even those who back Israel in the West — hates Israel.
“I can’t even fathom the idea of finding any solution there.”
One man, One vote.
The demographics will then sort themselves out very quickly as those Israelis with dual-citizenship decamp and move to their “second” country.
I would think that within a decade – maybe two – the demographics would be 70/30 or even more in favour of the Arab-speaking population, and nobody will be killed and nobody will be dispossessed. And at that point “Israel” will change its name to “Palestine” and nobody will make the slightest fuss about it.
Yeah, right, yeah, right.
Simple as that eh…
“Simple as that eh…”
I wouldn’t use that phrase, no.
But it is as inevitable as that.
When the Zionist grip starts to loosen then a significant number of those Zionists are going to bolt – and that will accelerate the process until it become a steamroller.
That’s what nobody pays any attention to: the Palestinians won’t go away because they have nowhere to go.
But there are enough Zionists who can – and will – and that will end up being the decisive factor.
They’re not bolting for the exits yet because they are convinced that they are winning.
But they will waver, and it won’t take many to break before the whole thing collapses.
Yeah, Right, there’s no sign of wavering though. They’re intensifying and extending their grip. The Golan Heights aren’t even an issue today, that’s how bad it’s gotten. Poverty levels in Gaza thanks to sanctions and blockade have never been so bad as they are right now.
Any day now we are expecting another major attack on Gaza along the lines of Caste Lead. They will hit schools and hospitals as usual and thousands of unarmed civilians will die.
” there’s no sign of wavering though.”
Not on the surface, no. The Israelis have excellent propaganda. Negative points are quickly brushed under the carpet. But Israel is being hollowed out from the inside. Everybody has their second passport, ready to run. You will remember there was a big panic in 2006 during Olmert’s war in Lebanon. Hizbullah missiles were falling on Israel, and there were lengthy queues outside foreign embassies for Israelis desperate to renew their second passports.
Nobody wants to fight any more. I mean, would you want to spend your life in the army reserve, obliged to be ready to go to war whenever Netanyahu happens to decide on another invasion of Gaza? No, you would say sod it, I’m off to the States for a more peaceful ‘normal’ life. The Israeli army is just a poor militia now (see Pat Lang, passim). Even the Gazans stopped them cold in 2014. That said, the airforce is very good, but it’s the only arm that works now. And then Hizbullah have their stash of missiles that can now reach anywhere in Israel, and Israel can do nothing about it (if they could, they would).
“Yeah, Right, there’s no sign of wavering though.”
Agreed, there is no *sign* of wavering.
Indeed, the degree of bombast coming out of the Israeli establishment is now deafening.
“The Golan Heights aren’t even an issue today, that’s how bad it’s gotten.”
Oh, I think that once the Syrian government wipes out the last of the jihadists and then forces the US to withdraw from Syrian territory then you will find the Golan Heights will become very much a hot potato.
After all, it will then be the last piece of Syrian territory that is not under the control of the Syrians, and they’ll be in no mood to be “intimidated” by the Israelis.
The Israelis will keep beating up on the Gaza Strip? Sure, they will.
And that will lull the Likud into thinking that the IDF is still a mighty fighting force, sure, it will.
But the strategic situation for Israeli is getting worse and worse, to the point where the Israelis dare not attack Lebanon for fear that the Syrians will take the opportunity to seize the Golan Heights, and the Israelis dare not launch an attack into Syria lest Hezbollah launch a counter-attack on the flank of that expeditionary force.
And either way there is this slight problem: the IDF is now a bunch of fluffy-girls-blouses, and as such is likely to get its arse kicked in a fight with a real army.
laguerre has it correct below: the IDF has been hollowed out, as has Israeli society as a whole. They are riding for a fall, and when they do they will come down to earth with a thud.
And nobody will be more surprised than them, which is when they will stampede for the door.
“That said, the airforce is very good, but it’s the only arm that works now.”
Rather highlights what an “own goal” the Israelis scored when their jets hid behind that Russia Ilyushin Il-20 plane.
They had been very successful in convincing the Russians not to hand over any S-300 missiles to the Syrians, and now the Syrians not only have them, but they have the most up-to-date version.
Way to go, guys….
When I wrote that, I was of course thinking “Endloesung des Judenproblems.”
Not everyone speaks German.
You must be more precise than simply writing ‘Complete Solution of Jewish Problem” which in itself is merely a literary juxtaposition to “Piecemeal Solution”. Perhaps you think policy implications are inherent in the phrase such as settlement in Madagascar ?
Hatuey
As a Muslim, I don’t share your pessimism. The Qur’an tells us that whatever the enemies of Allah plot, Allah will use it against them.. A time will come soon in which every single Je. will be have to acknowledge the Messiah as the true prophet of Islam that was sent to them and whom they rejected. He was after all a scholar of their religion and was lifted up to Heaven to escape their violence and obstinacy.
That pugnacious little shit Winston Churchill whose dream of Mosul oil was recently fulfilled by that other pugnacious little shit Tony Blair, destroyed the Ottoman Empire and gave the Je.s back to Israel. What neither of them understood is that the ottoman Empire was being run not by marauding Mongols but by European Muslims from the Balkans and it therefore had far more in common with Western values than the Islamist pisstaker who is now in charge in Istanbul.
We made our own enemy. We always do. We have made an enemy in Palestine which every nano second of every single day bosses us around to make us serve its filthy cause of Je.ish hegemony. So much so that our entire Western economy can be brought down by Je.ish banksters, and thus give back the marauding Mongols the upper hand.
Tories are that thick they actually back the side which is against Western values, which is Islamism against the side which is for Western values which is Islam. tories are that thick that when they discover they’ve made a wrong turn, they carry on obstinately in the wrong direction instead of admitting they were wrong.
There is a man in British politics who understands that David Cameron’s stupid decision to back Israeli hegemony in the Middle East by following the US neo-cons was a BAD IDEA. He also opposes the neo-cons in his own party. When the Tories f*** up Brexit completely, he will be in No 10. The countdown is already being called on the fingers of one hand. So cheer up . Help is at hand.
I don’t think Corbyn believes in any of your gods, and rightly so.
The problem is that the other side also makes claims based on what their god promised. Which god is the right one?
Jesus taught people to share nicely. I was some way down your post before I realised it wasn’t Jesus you were referring to…
I’m sorry, but the idea that Corbyn will do a thing to resolve this situation is pure fantasy.
And if you’re going to go back to the days of Churchill and distinguish between European Muslims and islamists, I’d expect some reference to Armenia in your analysis.
@SA, they’re even the same god, it’s just a difference in interpretation
S
“They are the same god”
If you say so. If something is unprovable it follows that it is also unprovable that it is the same as something else. similar but also unprovable.
Don’t really want to get into a deep theological discussion but think about it like this: All those who believe in god, of whatever description, think that this god is perfection, that is the nature of being a god. So other versions or other gods are either a better more improved model or an alternative model. In either case this perfection then appears somewhat tarnished.
“I was some way down your post before I realised it wasn’t Jesus you were referring to…”
Am I missing some humour here? First line of post:
“As a Muslim, I don’t share your pessimism. The Qur’an tells us that whatever the enemies of Allah plot, Allah will use it against them.”
The only war the US will fight with Iran is a nuclear war. A population of 80 million bordering Pakistan with 197 million is a big effort and the US has been a complete flop with even 35 million Afghans and $2 Trillion spent. Israel can play the “Polish Card” the one FDR used to blackmail Chamberlain into declaring war in 1939 – and boy did he apply pressure ! – but it won’t help Israel survive and more than Poland did.
Israel cannot “solve the Palestinian problem” any more than the “Jewish problem” was solved when Tsarist Russia let them emigrate to USA and USA stopped them emigrating from Nazi Germany under Johnson-Reed Act 1924 as in case of SS St Louis in 1939 sent back to Germany.
Israel will never resolve the problem they perceive. The actions of their ally and friend Mohammed bin Salman will make it nigh on impossible now the crudity of the gangsters running alongside Israel are plain to see and Trump had better read up on Uncle Remus and the Tar Baby
A thermonuclear attack on Iran by the USA would probably trigger a response by Russia. The Russian defence doctrine clearly states that thermonuclear weapons will be used in the event of an attack on Russia or its allies.
How close an ally Iran is in that context may be debatable; but Russia could not afford to stand by while Iran was destroyed.
Russia is brokering a peace plan, which none of the parties wholly supports. It is about respecting national borders and national sovereignty. Russia is in Syria at the request of the Syrian government, to expedite the removal of foreign fighters from the country. That is all. Israel, US and Saudi have designs on Iran’s oil reserves. Russia says No. UK appears to be a puppet government for this alliance at present. Morally this is questionable. Politically this is backing the raiders over the pastoralists, war over stability, wealth over democracy
Alyson
” Israel, US and Saudi have designs on Iran’s oil reserves. ”
No. You can’t steal oil reserves as such. The US tried it in Iraq, and it didn’t work, although they had the oil-fields in their hands.For Netanyahu (as it’s a personal obsession), it’s more about creating a war to cover up for his Final Solution of the Palestinian Problem.
@Hatuey,
I find myself agreeing with every part of your post, particularly the last bit. The West has been the “enabler” of Israel and its disgusting treatment of Palestinians.
One only has to go back to Cecil Rhodes and S Africa, to see how UK were involved.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/new-world-order-the-founding-fathers/5445255
http://www.globalresearch.ca/hidden-history-the-secret-origins-of-the-first-world-war/5600090
Two very good pieces of information here.
Hatuey
I somewhat share your pessimism but not want to give in yet. The problem is that the way this has been set and the ground rules have been laid is that the whole ‘international community’ is complicit in racism and ethnic cleansing and that is why there will be no progress. The parameters set are self contradictory, either you recognise that Palestinians have the right to Palestine or you don’t. Recognising that they have the right, at least an equal right, negates the current wisdom that some people have more rights than others, and that this trumps all other rights. This obvious point has become a taboo.
SA, if you think this about “right” or “rights” or notions of justice or anything like that, you aren’t even in the right solar system, never mind the right planet. That horse bolted decades ago.
Nobody with any seriousness disputes Israel’s criminality in any of this. And nobody with any seriousness disputes that we are talking about the highest order of crimes either, ethnic cleansing, war of aggression, collective punishment, etc.
This is about brute force, nothing else. The UN has been condemning Israel continually for about 50 years and nothing has come of it because the US vetoes just about everything.
@Hatuey,
“The UN has been condemning Israel continually for about 50 years and nothing has come of it because the US vetoes just about everything.”
That is the rather large elephant in the room, and one which nobody seems to want to confront or even admit to.
I realise what you say but nevertheless there is a conversation going on that is a total cover up of reality and trying to justify the unjustifiable. This conversation has set the limits of what can and can’t be discussed.
UK, US, EU, NZ, Canada, Australia, all controlled by Zionist puppets. This is why Israel get away with what they do and to an extent Saudi, who have ‘the goods’ on UK dealings.
It’s about time the people of these nations took responsibility for the actions of their ‘elected’ MP’s, especially those with ‘dual nationality’.
In UK Corbyn is being attacked, not for his policies, which haven’t been mentioned, but for what he stands for. His promise to recognise Palestine, if he becomes PM, has them really scared, as has his policy for nationalised banks, that lend Government [Sovereign] money to Entrepreneurs [SME’s] who currently cant get loans from banks, as they provide competition to their Corporate friends. He also wants new bank rules, no doubt based on Glass Seagal.
He’ll need to watch is back. Look what happened to Lincoln, Andrew Jackson, John F Kennedy when they went against the money men!
Corbyn supports peace and reconciliation. If Bernie was president this might be a way forward. Bernie supports Israel. He also supports human rights. He also supports American business interests at home and abroad. There is currently an imbalance between corporate and national interests. Greater equilibrium is needed. Corbyn can do nothing about this bigger picture. He is merely a lodestar of what is morally right.
Everyone leave out the history of how South Africa visited Canada concerning Canada’s reservation system for us (Native Peoples) before setting up their system. So, these were part of the long history of race-based illegal dispossessions.
My understanding is that South Africa left the Commonwealth when it became a republic in 1960 largely because Diefenbaker opposed admitting a Republic of South Africa into the Commonwealth. Did he do so because of U.S. pressure?
There’s quite enough division inside Tory dogma without blaming outsiders. Death threats have been received by British Tory MPs over Brexit. Of course if you subscribe to Tory dogma yourself you might not see it. But from the outside I think Tory infighting is always what destroys their nonsense. The UK Tory party is about to self-combust within a few days.
If Republicanism was an issue when South Africa left the Commonwealth, the underlying issue may have been pressure from a British-based German billionaire family which enjoys connections in the City of London, including with the “diamond bank” Hambro family, and which keeps an ancestral castle in Windsor. The Republic of India was allowed to stay in the Commonwealth. That said, a white republic may have been considered more of an affront.
It was Malaysia that refused to admit the Republic of South Africa to the Commonwealth and rallied opposition at the Commonwealth Conference in 1961
Good question.
My aunt was killed in the Rhodesian revolution in ’78. My father never suggested to me that this was unjust, and he was a great supporter of the Palestinians also.
But it can and does happen. When people are relieved of their injustices others happen, and I hope this is incontestible. This gives fear to those in control to give it up.
Frankly, I don’t see the development of “a unitary, democratic state blind to race and religion” in Israel/Palestine as possible in today’s climate in the Middle East.
Wouldn’t it be better to negotiate on a two-states basis to at least achieve a partial solution, rather than no solution at all?
The situation is very different from that in South Africa at least in two respects: American public opinion (which is what matters in the west) is strongly behind Israel, whereas it was strongly opposed to white South Africa, and Jews are a large majority in today’s Israel whereas whites were a small minority in South Africa.
I just wonder about the Palestinian people – not their power elites. After 70 years of cold or hot war, wouldn’t peace be the best option.
Jews are not a large majority in today’s Palestine.
Jews are a minority on the land they have stolen, which is destined to be returned to its true owners, the Palestinian people.
Don’t wonder if the Palestinians want peace, they do want it, and they will have it when all Palestine is liberated from the vicious racist and apartheid Zionist entity.
“Jews are a minority on the land they have stolen”
Incorrect.
The Israeli state is expanding as per it’s intention and uses continual violence as a cover for it’s colonial expansion.The Israeli state has no borders because it’s expansion/colonialism is not finished.Peace,law and order,threaten the expansionist/colonialist intentions of the Israeli state.The Palestinians are being oppressed/genocided out of their land/country.They are not the source of violence.Their country has been colonised.
The haphazard toss of the phrase into the boiling soup of discussion “That solution requires the abolition of apartheid Israel and its replacement by a unitary, democratic state blind to race and religion.”, is not sufficient to provide a solution and remains utopic, much as the 2-state solution is as well. The use of archaic terms such as state cannot provide a framework that idea being the source of the problem in the first place. And “blind” to the actual problem of “race and religion”, is not going to be a good beginning either.
The interspersion of populations defeats any state superstructure, imposed or otherwise.
Citizenship must be dissociated from territory and only then correspond to nationality. Mutual recognition begets reciprocal obligations in all matters including security. Reciprocity reigns in such a Federation of Palestinian and Hebrew Nations.
abraham
The fact that Palestine is a Holy Land , blessed with its climate , location and centuries of religious truth on the tongues of the holy prophets of monotheism, is of far more significance than the presence of Zionist idiots on the empty throne of Jerusalem. The custodianship of islam was taken from the Je.s and given to the true prophet of Islam Muhammad SAW. The presence of Zionist idiots is not accidental, it was part of Allah’s plan.
They want to get back the high position they held before they tried to murder their true prophet, the Messiah, or anointed person.
And if they did recognise him and listened to his words that “after me will come another”, the Je.s would instantly fall prostrate and join Islam. As Jesus pbuh is reported to have told them” if the people of Samaria, i.e. polytheists, had witnessed the miracles that have been shown to the Children of Israel, they would have covered their heads with sack-cloth and ashes and repented ”
Calm down madam , Allah is Great, and He has a Comprehensive plan.
Not a Rea deal of rest for Christians or their cemeteries in the region however suggesting a godlessness rampant
You’re prostituting your intellect, @Abraham. Sentences such as “‘(B)lind’ to the actual problem of ‘race and religion’ (…) is not going to be a good beginning“, “The interspersion of populations defeats any state superstructure” (why use the concept of “state” if you consider it “archaic”?) and “Citizenship must be dissociated from territory and only then correspond to nationality” are all predicated on the given and foully racist idea that a J__ is a J__ first. And you know it.
Out of interest, which “philosophers” did the supporters of South African apartheid most refer to? I could guess Herbert Spencer, and perhaps also Arthur de Gobineau and Ernst Haeckel, but does someone here know for a fact? Apartheid South African anthropology must have been quite a field too.
Stewart Jackson, who was David Davis’s Special Adviser and Chief of Staff at the Department for Exiting the European Union until Davis resigned from that position after Chequers, and who was previously Davis’s PPS until he lost his own seat in Peterborough, recently called a hospitalised child a “pathetic cretin”.
The boy had had an operation in Great Ormond Street hospital which prevented him from attending the march for a People’s Vote, and to cheer him up he had a photo of himself taken in hospital with an EU flag on his bed which his stepdad posted to Twitter.
Tories are so full of hatred that it can beggar a decent person’s belief when they witness it. The only time they think about the difference between right and wrong is when the cameras are rolling, and sometimes not even then.
Have to say that I have never heard of him. The MP for Peterborough from 2005-2017.
Have you looked at his Wikipedia entry? Note his expenses claims for housing and a report on the content of his communication to a constituent. He seems to suffer from the foot in mouth syndrome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Jackson
Some wag has added ‘Following his incompetence at the 2017 general election, Jackson was appointed Special Advisor and Chief of Staff to the Secretary of State at the Department for Exiting the European Union.[6] ‘ That links to a BBC report.
He is/was a member of CFoI and visited Israel in 2008. That visit followed the Cast Lead slaughter.
https://www.theyworkforyou.com/regmem/?p=11759
His ‘spouse’ (Wikipedia) is Sarah O’Grady who works as Social Affairs Correspondent at the Express!
He’s having a hard time on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/search?f=news&vertical=news&q=stewart%20jackson&src=refgoogle
* Arab world: 13,132,327 km2, 22 states, population 423,000,000 (of which 0.01% Jewish) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arab_world
Most Jews left the Arab world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_Arab_and_Muslim_countries
* Israel: 20,770 km2, 1 state, population 8,934,000, of which 20.9% Arab https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel
I encountered a young J__ish man online recently who was participating in a discussion about the word “anti-Semitism”. He was by no means uneducated, and when someone suggested that using “anti-Semitic” to mean “anti-J__ish” was confusing, given that not all Semites are J__ish, he replied that yes, that is correct, but the vast majority are, except for a few tiny groups. He may have had in mind the Samaritans and Karaites. He seemed completely unaware that 400 million Arabs are also Semites. He may have been putting it on, but he wasn’t banging the table or engaged in an argument about Z__nism, so I got the impression that he was genuinely ignorant of the fact that only about 1 in 25 Semites are J__ish.
Amharic, the official language of Ethiopia, is a Semitic language spoken by some 22 million people. That’s far more speakers than Hebrew has.
I often ask why people say anti-Semitic when they mean anti-J__ish. The answer I usually get is “we’ve been doing it for a long time and we can’t change now”.
Just look at the hasbara in the way Wikipedia describes it:
“The J__ish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries, or J__ish exodus from Arab countries, was the departure, flight, expulsion, evacuation and migration of 850,000 J__s”
Let’s tell it how it really was:
many Arabs of J__ish cultural heritage migrated within the Arab world to Palestine, where a foreign-backed fascist Ashkenazi-run settler regime encouraged them to stop viewing themselves as Arabs and made them send their children to schools where the medium of instruction was a part-revivalist part-new version of Hebrew.
Indeed the Jcws migrated from Arab countries to Israel were Arabs and I should add them to the 21% Muslim Arab population of Israel: so + another 10%. Remember Mecca and Medina before Mohamed?
We both know that their Jcwish religion was the reason they moved.
Can’t mention the Elephant in the Room here can we – “the religion of peace” (of the Asian and African grave yards)?
Antonym
“the religion of peace”
Ah, an Islamophobe! Only visceral haters of Islam cite that expression. It’s in their crib-sheets, and on their web-sites. What they haven’t understood, indeed are not up to understanding, is that it’s an incorrect translation of the name of Islam, which doesn’t mean Religion of Peace, but Submission to God. I don’t think Muhammad ever claimed to be a pacifist, but the bigots who are so obsessed about Islam try to make it out. It’s only them, and I don’t know why they bother, as it only shows them up.
the departure, flight, expulsion, evacuation and migration of 12,000,000 ethnic Germans from ancestral homelands in Central Europe 1945-47
The Jews who left some of the Arab countries, left on a message one day, without saying goodbye to thier close friends, and left not only to occupied Palestine but also to the States and other countries. They had not been subjected to any form of discrimination when the left in many cases.
MODS
Is this Antonyl? If so is it an attempt at sockpuppetry or a genuine mistake?
“Most Jews left the Arab world”
after the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestine.
Thank you, Craig.
I’ve long advocated the transfer of the United Nations HQ to Jerusalem. Not only does this idea celebrate the multi faith, multinational nature of this city, it would serve to emphasise secular solutions to living together.
I suspect it is more central to the world’s capitals in terms of travel time than NYC, and would provide a suitable open forum for distributing the world’s remaining oil reserves.
League of Nations had an International City called Free City of Danzig which Poland chipped away at incessantly.
Murray, you flout your utter ignorance as a flag of honour. The “Bantustans” were sited, not in “too arid, rocky and mineral free to have attracted significant white settlement” in 300 years. The homeland of Bophuthatswana for instance was sited right on top of the richest platinum belt in the world and the area with the greatest ferrochrome reserves. The Transkei and the Ciskei were in the Eastern Cape, an area so friendly to agriculture that the British colonialists sent the 1820 settlers there. Zululand (the ancestral home of the Zulus) was, and remains the single most verdant, sub-tropical part of South Africa, the only region, indeed, where it is possible for the subsistence farmer to make a living. The majority of whites were happy to stay in the Free State, an arid region where the maize yield was between a quarter to a third per acre of Zimbabwe. Comparisons between Israel and South Africa are odious, to say the least. South Africans had the general good of all the people foremost in their minds, the Israelis only care for themselves, being as they think “God’s chosen people”.
Your potted history elides much more than it reveals.
Well, you can’t fool them horseflies
‘God’s chosen people’
And Afrikaaner settlers didn’t think that too?
Mr Murray’s piece is hyperpartisan polemic using a logical fallacy, and mirrors the extreme right here in Aust who claim that Indigenous lands eg Arnhem Land and the APY Lands in which non indigenous people can’t own land and require permits to work and visit, constitute apartheid. Craig Murray meet Andrew Bolt.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/False_analogy
Israel is simply following the US model of moving Indians onto reservations – the Indian Removal Act 1830 made the policy explicit in removing Indians from areas settled by Whites. This is the basis of Israel’s policy of land “reclamation” from its indigenous population. It is also the basis used by Bethmann-Hollweg in his Septemberprogramm 1914. The policy is an old one and proved very successful for the US and much less so for Germany which ultimately paid a very heavy price for its approach to its neighbours.
Israel is simply the projection of US Values with US Weapons into a region lacking defensible geographic boundaries pursuing US objectives of territorial expansionism which sees any state on its expanding envelope of settlement as a threat to be eradicated. Kay Bailey Hutchinson spoke in this tenor about “Europe” where “our countries” border Russia and Russia must withdraw all threats on Europe’s borders by retreating.
It is Imperialism a l’outrance.
I’ve been thinking about the use of ‘Reservations ‘in the US concerning it’s indigenous people and their struggle with imperialism and cultural imperialism in a society whose legal system does not recognise indigenous people’s rights or a justice system born out of their culture.It seems to me that though ‘decolonisation'[intellectual/cultural as well] admits the rights of the indigenous people,the benefits of colonialism are so huge that considerations of the morality/legality/ethics of colonialism,which would seem to be negative,are unaffordable and are not developed-in mainstream anyway.
Israel and the white Afrikaans government were very close during the apartheid years. Their militaries worked together, with a constant flow of Israeli weapons into South African. Nuclear weapons were offered at one stage. Israel influence extended deep into South Africa’s economy too. The major brokers and investment organisations were controlled by Jewish companies such as Max Pollak and Fremantle et al. Harry Oppenheimer’s Anglo American/De Beers conglomerate dominated the mining and banking sector. The fall of apartheid led to a massive exodus of Jews from their mansions in their Houghton enclave in Johannesburg, to New York. Houghton had the only synagogue in Johannesburg, but is now predominantly Muslim with two mosques.
It was a trade. Israel supplied weapons and technical expertise. South Africa supplied raw materials, notably uranium for Israel’s nukes. The deal was negotiated by the “liberal” Shimon Peres, the father of Israel’s nuclear program.
I do not think that the Afrikaners harboured the extent of hate in their hearts for the black Africans as the majority of Israelis have for the Palestinians.
Also there will be little or no change for the Palestinians as long as the powerful lobbies for Israel exist in the UK and the US parliaments and governments.
Religious Israelis think the Old Testament’s genocidal language about the Amalekites applies to the Palestinians.
Here’s a Zionist author on Ha’aretz which purports to be a liberal publication, Tzvia Greenfield.
Two of her latest pieces –
Why We Should Go Easy on the Saudi Crown Prince
For 50 years we’ve prayed for a key Arab leader who agrees to sign a significant pact with Israel. Such a leader has finally arrived ….
Arab Citizens Must Accept Israel as the State of the Jcwish People
Those who do not recognize or acknowledge the unique problematic aspect of the Jcwish people’s complicated history will not be able to achieve a genuine and constructive dialogue with the Jcwish public ….
Links:
https://www.haaretz.com/misc/writers/WRITER-1.4968181
“For 50 years we’ve prayed for a key Arab leader who agrees to sign a significant pact with Israel.”
The arrangements with the South Lebanese Army and the cooperation with the Phalange that allowed the massacres at Sabra and Chatila weren’t enough, then? Leaders in Egypt and Jordan and indeed Palestine itself aren’t
rich“key” enough? Is anything ever enough?“Those who do not recognize or acknowledge the unique problematic aspect of the Jcwish people’s complicated history will not be able to achieve a genuine and constructive dialogue with the Jcwish public”
Do hasbaraniks have special short key sequences for sentences like that? Or do they cover their keyboards with mouth foam as they hammer them out? Such extreme racist arrogance sometimes makes me wonder whether the person is criminally insane or whether they are sane and merely a wicked liar, but then something kicks in and I realise in these cases there’s not really a difference.
Okay,
Single State, move the E, jobs a good un!
Palestien it is
I see the Pro-Israeli have been busy in Scotland scuppering teaching of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict in schools.
I suppose more and more politicians only to happy to out themselves as Pro_Israeli Familiars…….
There’s a very big difference between South African Apartheid and Israeli occupation. Sure, there were plenty of Tories like Mrs T and her husband who supported apartheid, but most of the left liberal establshment opposed it. Today Neocons like Janet Daley eulogise Nelson Mandela as “the greatest freedom fighter of the 20th century”. On the other hand most of the liberal establishment strongly support Israeli occupation. New Labour was/is ardently pro-Israel, as were/are the Clintons. Obama championed Israeli massacres in Gaza, and continued to give this openly racist state massive aid. Clearly too, the liberal interventionist movement which promoted the invasions of Iraq, Syria and Libya, has strong ties to the Israel lobby. Notice also how the supposedly anti-racist Antifa never attack the rallies of Neocons and Liberal interventionists who support Israel’s vicious racist policies. Just like Trump, the Clintons and Obama champion a polity that not only slaughters Palestinians, but whose leader, Netanayahu, justifies expelling and imprisoning African asylum seekers on explicitly and completely unapologetic racist grounds. Funny how Antifa’s “antiracism” doesn’t extend to harassing US pols who defend the shootingto kill of Palestinian protesters by the IDF – while the same Antfa blowhards fulminate histrionically about “racist scum” on the very outer margins of US politics and society. Funny too how the same feminists who wail about the “misogyny” of Trump, find nothing to object to in a US Democrat establishment that endorses the killing of unarmed women and children in Palestine, Yemen, Pakistan, Iraq and Afghanistan. No wonder Antifa are such darlings of the CIA/MI5/MI6 affiliated corporate media.
@Jude93 – A quick illustration of the difference is that the apartheid regime in SA never attacked bantustans with warplanes and tanks.
N_ Too true.
Hey, Jude. Spot on!
The only thing that will wake people up to the horrors of Israel, its power and influence in the world, is the realisation that “Israel did 9/11”. But with gatekeepers like Craig Murray and his mate George G around, aint gonna happen. people don’t care about palestine because a) it does not directly affect them and b) they are programmed with israeli endorsed lies about the situation via brainwasing entities like the BBC, which have been infiltrated by Zionists to ensure the truth does not become mainstream.
People do care about Palestine. It’s only the Israeli propaganda that people have forgotten about it.
Mandela was a shill for western mega-banks and transnationalist capitalist interests. Whilst I don’t share John Pilger’s Marxist views, he is very good on just what a shakedown the “liberation” of SA was for blacks and whites alike.
Is John Pilger a Marxist? He’s certainly a socialist, which isn’t the same thing. But it seems to me that neither Marxism nor socialism has anything at all to do with Pilger’s positions on apartheid states like South Africa formerly, or Israel or Australia in the present day. Exactly what views of Pilger’s do you want to distance yourself from, particularly in the context of the present discussion?
mikjall: ***Exactly what views of Pilger’s do you want to distance yourself from, particularly in the context of the present dicussion***
As in the case of our host, Pilger says so many things that need to be said, I don’t see much point in anti-war folk dwelling on the things he says that we may disagree with. However since you ask, I do think he takes an unduly charitable view of the Chinese comunist/super-capitalist regime. For me China combines many of the worst elements of capitalist exploitation and Communist dictatorship. Also, I hope it hasn’t escaped Pilger’s notice that the Chinese Communist Party has very cordial relations with Israel.
Thanks for intelligent answer. I could have some comments about your take is on China—not that I am uncritical of China myself—but I think that we anti-war folk, for whom John Pilger should be a leading light, should not waste time squabbling among themselves.
mikjall: Thanks – very much agree.
What’s with the berets and cap badges worn by at least four of the men on the platform with Tommy Robinson outside the Old Bailey today? (Photo 1, Photo 2.) Three of them were wearing medals too. He’s got a record of appearing with members of the armed forces.
I don’t understand what the authorities are doing in his contempt of court case. Was Judge Nicholas Hilliard only an amicus curiae or what? If not, then why couldn’t witnesses be cross-examined? And what’s with the referral to the Attorney General, who isn’t a judge and can’t hand down a sentence?
The men with berets and cap badges were most likely retired members of the armed forces. It is probable that they support the views and activities of Tommy Robinson. Perhaps they made an appearance today in response to the army’s expressed dislike of serving soldiers posing for pictures with Mr. Robinson.
The Judiciary has been leveraged so as to apply as much emotional and financial pressure to Robinson as possible. A significant question is to inquire as how it was possible for Judge Marson to move with such speed (5 hours from time of arrest to jail) and how the state is incapable of assembling its case in a 5 month period, and remains incapable of providing a date when it will have assembled its case.
So what you have for entertainment is further evidence of a state that is essentially hollowed out. How else to explain that one relatively uneducated person who is despised and hated by the great and the good is capable of humiliating the British army and the British legal system within a few short weeks. The answer is not that Tommy Robinson is strong – it is that British society and British institutions are unbelievably weak.
“A significant question is to inquire as how it was possible for Judge Marson to move with such speed (5 hours from time of arrest to jail) and how the state is incapable of assembling its case in a 5 month period, and remains incapable of providing a date when it will have assembled its case.”
They certainly seem to be messing about. The first two groups of child sex abusers (8 and 4 defendants) from Huddersfield were convicted on 17 April and 5 June and sentenced on 7 June and 22 June. A third group (8 defendants) were convicted on 8 October and are due to be sentenced on 1 November. There have been no reports of any defendants being acquitted or having charges against them dropped, which is unusual because you would have thought that in respect of at least some of the defendants the prosecution would have asked the jury to consider alternative charges.
I still don’t understand what kind of hearing took place yesterday at the Old Bailey. If it was a trial, why couldn’t witnesses be cross-examined? What is the Attorney General being asked to do? Knock the case to another judge, or to a judge who actually sits as a proper trial judge rather than an amicus curiae? Nicholas Hilliard is the Recorder of London, a City of London position. One of his responsibilities is to allocate cases and manage court lists at the Bailey. Is somebody f***king somebody else around? Why has this gone to the Bailey anyway?
I haven’t read any reports saying the crown hasn’t been able to assemble its case. Is that what some are saying? I have a niggling suspicion that certain players in an ongoing farce in London’s other city, Westminster, featuring the cabinet room, Committee Room 14 at the Commons, and the Commons’ chamber itself, are influencing the timing of Tommy Robinson events.
Craig, I think it is noble of you to take a stand on this matter as we have seen such a torrent of abuse aimed at people who have been critical of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people and criticised such comments as anti-Semitic.
As I mentioned elsewhere, the main difference I can see between the South African version of Apartheid and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is that whereas the white South Africans needed the reserve labour pool of the black population, Israel does not need the Palestinians.
It is difficult to have any dialogue with theocratic entities, because of all the mumbo-jumbo attached to the beliefs, in the end you are trying to talk reason with an ancient book. I can see no easy solution other than to persist with the boycott strategy.
“white South Africans needed the reserve labour pool of the black population, Israel does not need the Palestinians”
Trump/Kushner’s “Deal of the Century” concept is to make the Palestinian areas into labour camps.
Stuart Littlewood is a long time supporter of the Palestinians. Here he refers to Kairos and their 2009 document entitled ‘A Moment of Truth; A word of faith, hope and love from the heart of Palestinian suffering’. It was issued shortly after the Cast Lead slaughter.
‘Saving the Holy Land’ – https://dissidentvoice.org/2018/10/saving-the-holy-land/
He concludes:
‘What Sabeeel-Kairos says helps campaigners and civil society keep focus on some of the essential issues in the big struggle ahead. I pick out the following:
Challenge the deafening silence of most churches and why the Bible has been used to justify oppression and injustice;
The ‘enemy within’ is often the Christian Zionist;
Call for boycott, disinvestment and sanctions (BDS) and other forms of non-violent direct action;
Need for better co-operation among human rights organisations and civil society groups in drawing up a road map towards a solution based on justice and international law;
America, the great power, must be persuaded to respect international law and call on others to do the same;
The siege on Gaza must be lifted;
The West Bank must be liberated and its people allowed to regain their freedom. Equality must be ensured for all inhabitants;
The international community must shoulder its responsibilities and the UN must show itself capable or willing to implement its own resolutions or dissolve; and,
Internal divisions have destroyed Palestinian resistance and undermined international support. The causes must be removed – urgently.
It’s sickening to read that Israelis continue to murder Palestinians daily, with impunity. I, for one, want to see campaigners target those in Washington and London who could stop the systematic killing and impose justice but to their everlasting shame won’t.’
Much appreciated subject Craig. In respect of the background music playing in the apartheid RSA and Israel/Palestine I would like to raise the role of religion as being helpful in transforming South Africa and a hindrance in motivating change in Israel/Palestine. The ANC, at home and in exile, comprised many Jewish, Christian, Muslim and faithless/atheist members. The Afrikaaners, albeit with a history of slaving, had a protestant religious background which opened them to Christian ‘values’ that could be called upon for change. Priests like Desmond Tutu and Trevor Huddleston made significant contributions. Neighbouring states were also helpful in supporting change and showing solidarity.
Unlike the RSA the ‘unholy land’ faces a real external existential threat and has USA support, for both strategic reasons and Parousia, or a new Dan Brown.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trevor_Huddleston
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desmond_Tutu